National Parliament authorizes Government to amend the Code of Civil Procedure
The members of the National Parliament approved today, February 1st, 2021, with 41 votes in favour, no votes against and 13 abstentions, the Law Proposal that authorizes the Government to change the preparatory stage regime of the civil procedure included in article 385 to 388 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
The discussion was attended by the Minister of Justice, Manuel Cárceres da Costa, who provided a general framework for the law proposal and clarified the issues raised by the Members of the Parliament.
This legislative intervention, together with the Law Proposal on the Legal Regime of Voluntary Arbitration, was approved by the Council of Ministers on October 23rd, 2019, under the proposal of the then Minister for Legislative Reform and Parliamentary Affairs, with the aim to ensure the improvement and strengthening of the justice administration system, so that offers all citizens a judicial service that ensure the objective, impartial, equitable, useful and efficient resolution of disputes.
With the approval of this Law Proposal, greater flexibility is granted to the moment of preparing the discussion hearing and trial, within the preparatory stage phase.
There are two main amendments that the Government is now authorized to introduce in the Civil Procedure Code. The first refers to the provision, in addition to the specification and the questionnaire, to the alternative preparatory schemes, always aimed at identifying the core aspects of the dispute, in order to focus the discussion hearing and the trial on the essential, and to avoid dispersion of the procedural work on marginal and superfluous issues. On the other hand, it is also intended that the trial selection’s preparation scheme, more appropriate to the specific characteristics of the litigation, be dependent on the Judge’s order, even admitting the possibility of, in the simplest cases, dispensing this subphase of preparatory stage.
With these amendments, the Judge, without being exempted from issuing a judgment on the most appropriate scheme for the preparation of the final trial hearing, is not obliged, with absolute rigidity, to the preparation of the specification and questionnaire.
